Dunkard Brethren

The Dunkard Brethren are a small group of conservative Schwarzenau Brethren that withdrew from the Church of the Brethren in 1926.

The name Dunkard or Dunker is derived from the Pennsylvania German word dunke, which comes from the German word tunken, meaning "to dunk" or "to dip". This emphasizes the method of baptism observed by all of the various branches of Schwarzenau Brethren — trine immersion.

The Dunkard Brethren have their roots in a protestant movement, known as Schwarzenau Brethren or Dunkards. This movement began, when Alexander Mack and seven other believers did baptism by immersion in the Eder river in Germany in 1708.

The Church of the Brethren represented the largest body of churches that descended from this original pietist and Anabaptist movement. For the history until 1926 see Church of the Brethren: Early history and Church of the Brethren: The Great Schism.

Early in the 20th century some members of Church of the Brethren, the largest of the branch of the Schwarzenau Brethren, began to feel that there was a drift away from the old apostolic standards. Benjamin Elias Kesler (1861-1952), an Elder of the Church of the Brethren in Missouri, addressed these concerns in a twenty-page monthly paper, called "The Bible Monitor", that he published starting in October 1922. In 1923, Kesler was therefore refused a seat at the Annual Conference. Because of this his conservative sympathizers held their own separate meeting in the next three years. During the Annual Conference in 1926 concerns nearly identical to those of Kesler and his sympathizers were addressed, but not solved in a way that satisfied Kesler and his followers. Subsequently the Kesler group withdrew from the Church of the Brethren and formed the Dunkard Brethren Church in 1926.

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